Beirut Buenos Aires Beirut

Grace is a Lebanese woman living in Buenos Aires. One day her great aunt tells her a secret: Mohammed, her father, Grace’s great grandfather, did not die in Argentina, but returned to Lebanon, his home country, leaving behind the family he had formed here. She says that she and her brothers, angry with his departure, cut off all communication with him, but that she believes there is another family, far away from them, which they have never contacted. She hands her in a box with family pictures and letters written in Arabic that the man sent from Lebanon and nobody ever read.

Sometime later the great aunt dies. Upset, Grace decides to look into Mohammed’s life. From his letters and her grandmother’s testimony (Mohammed’s other daughter), she begins to reconstruct his life, his arrival in Buenos Aires, his life in Argentina as an immigrant, and finally his return to Lebanon.

Grace finally travels to Cafarquela and meets Mohammed´s Lebanese family. She learns details of Mohammed’s life there. The two families, separated by thousands of kilometers and fifty years of silence, manage to re-establish the lost bond.

The film, directed by Hernan Belon, will be screened during the Lebanese Film Festival.